…notice how the house actually BLEEDS…

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(Male, 40’s) I have this enduring fear that I’ll end up living on the street in a damp cardboard box and this nightmare for some reason called that up.

“…the carriage itself was jet black as were all four of the horses…”

I was downtown in a big city. It had a pretty thriving city life, though things were very grimy and a big run-down. Like there were two extremely tall wooden houses built with timbers probably a foot or two thick and covered with dirty yellow clapboards. These houses must have been ten stories tall and then BETWEEN them, that is, over the street another house had been built that was supported by being wedged between them. It was a busy street and the supports to the middle house were obviously falling apart. It was just a matter of time until it fell.

I was dressed like a street person. I’m not sure that I actually wasn’t a street person. In one hand I held a large clear plastic bag with ice water and a couple dozen cans of soda. I guess I made my living selling soda to the commuters as they came out of the buildings to evacuate the city and go home to the suburbs.

There was a crowd of people. I had made enough for the day to cover expenses and get a meal so I was about ready to sell the leftovers to this other street person who had the same gig. Then a loud clackitty clanging sound came up the street. It was a horse drawn carriage. It looked like a couple had just gotten married, because the woman was dressed in a frilly white dress and the guy was in a tux complete with a tall top hat. Except the carriage itself was jet black as were all four of the horses.

And the strangest part was that three of the four horses were dead. They hung lifeless in their harnesses while the fourth and final horse dragged the whole carriage along. The people in the carriage acted as if it was nothing to have three dead horses attached to the carriage, perhaps as long as things kept moving along they didn’t really care about how it happened.

This clever marketer produces cremation urns that actually resemble the deceased. Seems to me, you could keep it on the same shelf as the honey jar that looks like a beehive or a cookie jar that looks like a chocolate chip cookie.

Cremation Urns that Resemble the Deceased

( http://www.cremationsolutions.com/Personal-Urns-c109.html )

(Male, 30’s) Only part of the dream was a nightmare but it occurred at the end of a longer dream that was just disorienting, probably not exactly a nightmare, where I was wandering lost through a college campus trying to find something to eat. I knew there was an excellent restaurant around someplace but when I found it, it was closed for some holiday. I looked in the windows. There were huge steaming trays of food. They were prepared for a celebration and I wasn’t included or invited.

“… It was extremely contagious but no one was exactly certain how it spread…”

The nightmare stared when I stumbled into a hospital. It looked like any of the other college buildings – dark red brick with ornate stone insets. The hospital was dedicated to treat people suffering from some very dangerous illness. It was extremely contagious but no one was exactly certain how it spread. I was on the nursery ward. There were only a couple real nurses, people who knew what they were doing but there were several volunteers who more or less just kept getting in the way. I was a volunteer. The first task was to carry these infants in and place them on these high folding beds where the intake nurse could assess them. The intake nurse was very beautiful but very mean and she looked sort of like someone I work with. She yelled at everyone constantly.

None of these babies looked very good: they were waxy, barely breathing if they were breathing at all. They were all tightly wrapped in white blankets. One of the babies I carried in was black and I don’t mean African-American. The child was black like it was carved out of black wax. The intake nurse started yelling at me. Wasn’t it obvious that this child was dead? And worse, wasn’t it obvious that this child was a fruiting body for the infection. She started scrubbing down the area, though it’s strange to call it that because nothing she did involved water. The intake nurse wrapped the baby in the blankets. Then she used a flat thin piece of metal to scrape the top layer of wax off the floor. She yelled for assistance from another nurse. The other nurse was extremely ugly in the sense that she was physically deformed. She was bald and her face had huge round growths on the forehead, some the size of a softball. But she was patient with the intake nurse’s abuse and understanding with the volunteers who were all doing as best as we could, as best as we knew how. As soon as this second nurse was in the room, the intake nurse scooped up the dead infected baby and started to leave the room. But I seemed to be standing exactly in the place where she wanted to move. So she kept yelling at me and swearing over and over again, “Get out of the way! Get out of the way!”

It was possible that we all had been infected and would die

“…The other men were dead, shot in the head…”

(Male, 40’s) Last night I dreamed: I was in some caper with two friends and an out of towner. We stole some money, or played a harmless but elaborate trick on someone I’m not sure; the kind of “crime” that gets you on Jay Leno instead of cell block 4. Anyway, the one new guy- our hired schemer was funny, and charming and after the whole game was played and we met back at the agreed place, we shook hands to make our congenial get away, he reached into his coat and shot the other two grinning guys, and he shot me twice in the back. I felt it. It was shocking, like being hit hard with a phone book with a nail in it. I fell face down. He stepped over to me and set the gun down in my palm, so I could finish myself off. With his finger he tapped the back of my head, “Just here, can you do it?” I just nodded. I heard his footsteps move down the hallway. I was in pain, but I rolled over, and sat up. The other men were dead, shot in the head. I took the gun and wondered if I would screw it up. The gun was a tiny silver .22 with red trim, like something you’d see in an arcade. I could feel my insides, damaged, no blood yet, but a terrible soreness, and it was getting hard to breathe.

I went out to my car and drove to a friend’s house. Her name is Dawn. She was outside busy on her cell phone, so I had to wait till she got off to tell her I was probably going to die. I felt happy, and sleepy. I began coughing up what looked like red oatmeal, so think I couldn’t talk afterwards. She hung up, and ran off to a nearby hospital to see if anyone could come get me. I sat on the dark street, and lay down on my side, then rolled over on my face- this is how I sleep at night and felt the cool wet blacktop. The pain was less, but the weakness overcame me. I could people yelling and footsteps, but it all seemed very far away

“…I see something small hanging on a chain in the opening, dark against the sky…”

(Male, 30’s) It is the end-of-the-day school assembly, a routine gathering of students in the gym bleachers. Here we chat and laugh and have the energy of a group of young people who’ve been told to be patient. We are gathered in self imposed groups; athletes, clowns, the ill-tempered. I’m well liked, others are turned toward me, wanting to talk, tell me a joke, listen to mine, or look at drawings I’ve made in the spiral notebook, where biology notes should be. Over the PA system, music is heard. The song is Bernadette by the Four Tops. I can’t seem to find one of my classmates.

A bell rings, and we all stand as in church and wait until the row of kids before us files out before us. The way out of the gymnasium, and out of the school altogether, is a ladder made of mud and sticks, a kind of crude hillside with steps carved into it. You climb up and out through a small hole, a burrowing animal would make. I get to the ladder and begin my climb, I see something small hanging on a chain in the opening, dark against the sky. It’s been quickly, hung there, it’s a book, taped open to a certain page, so you must see it, even read it before leaving the school. I see outside on the lawn, a splitting of the student body- with boys going off right, the girls stepping left and waiting in a long line. I move in line with the girls to see what they’re doing, but no one speaks. It is the 18th Century. The girls do not speak. All are dressed in drab, homespun dresses, with green felt scarves, a kind of puritan school uniform. We are all in a line that leads to the doors to the tower. It is a severe structure, dark, mottled with years of weather, with tin gray shutters at the top and a long spiked steeple, but otherwise featureless. There is no church connected to it. We enter and ascend a long ladder to climb to the top, up and out one of the open windows, a look out perch, where one can see miles of spring green trees and the harbor beyond. I’m suddenly next in line. The wind up here is strong. In front of me is a girl I know. She’s pretty, about 8, much younger and is greeted by a sobbing woman who is at the top. The woman is a servant of mealtimes at the school. She is horrified to see her daughter is next in line for this moment. It is known that we are forbidden to speak during such trials. The girl quietly takes the rope and a short wooden sled that’s given to her. She ties it around her waist. How is it that such young hands are to affix a thick rope in a safe manner, secure enough to allow her to climb down outside the steeple in such a wind? The knot she makes is absurd, like a pretzel. She pulls back from the reaching hands and sobbing face of her mother safe within the tower’s shadow. The girl climbs over a short railing and begins her spider like descent. The knot immediately fails and the girl and the board both fall from the great height to the church yard below. There is no scream. Just the rope dangling in the wind. I pull it back in, crying and hand it back to the woman who numbly readies it for the next girl in line.

What happened was this; a young student, angered by something said to him during the day by a girl, hung the book of verses in the doorway, open to a certain passage; a challenge, a proverbial task designed to prove one is under, and worthy of the hand of Grace. In our time, in our world any open page from this book, must be read, understood and acted upon immediately.

It is the 18th Century’s version of the Columbine massacre.